Designing in Partnership with Community & History at Presser/Nugent Site

Since 2005, when several individuals supported by neighborhood groups banded together to get the Presser and Nugent Homes on the National Register of Historic places, history and community have strongly influenced development on the 100-200 blocks of Johnson Street in West Mt. Airy. So it is again, with BWA architecture + planning’s designs for a new senior apartment building on the historic site.

Conceptual massing study

BWA worked with extensive input from community stakeholders to develop a design for Nolen Properties‘ planned development on the on the 6-acre site. “One of the community’s primary concerns was preservation of green space and the impact of an infill building between to very iconic neighborhood structures” says BWA Principal Morris Zimmerman. Nolen Properties, assisted by BWA, presented two conceptual design alternatives. In the end, the community embraced a design that saves an underutilized, decorative carriage house while also maintaining a site for a future project.

In the chosen design, the new construction connects with and makes use of the Presser Carriage House, which has been unoccupied since 1985. The three-story Tudor-Revival style carriage house is on the National Register, and BWA’s conceptual design anticipates the need for the project to comply with National Park Service requirements for tax credits.